Finland is trying Basic Income

One of our future concerns is the economic aspect of the fast technological advancements in automation, replacing humans in their jobs.

Would the implications evolve into massive unemployment and a steep rise in social and financial gaps? Or might this be an opportunity to reduce workload and increase social wealth?

several concepts are being experimented among them are “robot tax”, money alternatives and basic income

The basic income is currently being experimented in several contries including Canada and Finland. Would be interesting to follow.

Strength: Basic income will reduce the dependency between work and income. It will free people to focus and explore their strenghts not being limited by a constant race against payments. The ethical question regarding loosing jobs to automation may be less threatening to individuals.

Weakness: The strongest opposers of this approach are worried of laziness spreading among people eventually causing more dependency, less accountability and less productivity which might even cause social instability. More big question are: Where does the money come from? On account of which other budget? How much is enough?

Opportunity: People are more relaxed, happier, promoting self growth, allowing more innovation, probably having a whole positive change to most aspects including education, economy and security. Budgets may come from “automation taxes” set on companies replacing human labour for automated processes

Threat: Failing to find proper economical solutiond to the upcomming challenges, failing to gain proper budget sources and failing to meet the potential positive social impact may quickly escalate to undesired waves of unemployment and social gaps which in their turn might go inevitably to deeper problems of crime, violence and sickness…